


open arms, nervous heart

by waveydnp



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Hiatus fic, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 19:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19091149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveydnp/pseuds/waveydnp
Summary: There are things they know about each other without having to say them. Phil doesn’t have to tell Dan what YouTube means to him because Dan already knows. Dan doesn’t have to tell Phil why YouTube is so hard for him. Phil knows.





	open arms, nervous heart

Mornings so deep into spring that they’re practically summer shouldn’t feel the way this one does when Phil’s eyes blink open to late morning light. Dan had opened the window before they climbed into bed last night and now the air that filters in is cool enough to make Phil shiver. The sun is hidden behind blue-grey clouds as it so often is, and there’s nothing to suggest the day is going to get much warmer than it is now.

Not for the first time since they got back, Phil thinks wistfully of Florida. Even those stormy days were warmer than this. He rolls over and pulls the blanket up over his bare shoulder, content to curl up and ignore the dreary feeling in his head for a little while longer and go back to sleep. He’s got nothing to do today. Nothing that _needs_ doing, anyway.

His eyes catch on a tuft of fluffy brown hair and it gives him pause. Dan is laid on his side facing Phil, hands tucked up under his pillow and mouth hanging open just enough to be cute and not something Phil will feel the need to tease him for later. Phil has a flash back to their first days together, to staying up so late talking and kissing that Dan had been too tired to stay awake the next day. He’s sure that evidence of the photo he’d taken that day is still floating around on the internet just a quick search away, but for once it doesn’t make his stomach squeeze anxiously.

It’s a good photo. He’s glad he’d taken it and he can’t beat himself up for being too smitten back then to restrain himself from bragging just a little about how adorable his new boyfriend was.

Somehow he’s still bloody adorable. How unfair that is, Phil thinks. Ten years on and Dan still looks like a teenager when he’s sleeping. Time has changed him in myriad ways, almost all of them for the better, but sometimes Phil looks at him and still sees the boy he’d collected at Manchester Picadilly with open arms and a nervous heart. 

The freckles dusted over the bridge of his nose are so faint they’re only visible when Phil shuffles in a little closer and really looks for them. He does so gingerly, because all thought of going back to sleep has been forgotten and that’s what he wants to do right now: look, without having to worry about Dan catching him out. Stare even, with a moony expression that might make ‘gaze’ a better descriptor for the way he focuses all his attention on the fan of dark lashes across the tops of Dan’s cheeks and the pink of lips that never seem hydrated no matter how hard the poor sod tries. 

Phil feels a pang of empathy for his younger self; even knowing what it would look like he has the urge to turn over and reach for his phone, to snap a close-up and post it for the world to see that Dan is still adorable and he’s still Phil’s to take candid photos of. The world may not be seeing much of Dan lately, but Phil still gets to see him every single day, and a small part of him wants to make sure the fans know that. It’s a part that’s decidedly separate from the business side of things. 

Because he’s not naive enough to think that things wouldn’t be bad for him if people thought Dan’s break was from Phil as well as the spotlight. He can’t pretend he hasn’t been losing sleep over it, wondering if their audience will lose interest before Dan feels ready to re-enter the fray. 

If that happens, it happens. They’ll figure it out together, as they have every other problem that’s presented itself over the course of their relationship. But he really hopes it doesn’t. He’s not ready for everything to change. He likes this version of the life they’ve built together, and he’s not ready for this chapter to be closed just yet.

Dan says he isn’t either. He says he’s not going to let bad brain chemistry and low self esteem keep him from expressing himself. He’s not going to let his fear of failure be a self fulfilling prophecy. He knows Phil’s fear because it’s his fear too.

Phil never speaks his fears out loud. Dan has enough guilt in his heart, enough reason to call himself a failure or a joke or any of the other nasty lies his brain convinces him are true. Phil’s not going to add to that. He’d say goodbye to all of it in a heartbeat if Dan asked him to, if Dan said it was what he needed not to lose the fight to his demons. 

But Phil knows Dan would never do that. There are things they know about each other without having to say them. Phil doesn’t have to tell Dan what YouTube means to him because Dan already knows. Dan doesn’t have to tell Phil why YouTube is so hard for him. Phil knows. 

He also knows by now that it’s not his problem to solve. He can offer support, a sympathetic ear, a shoulder to cry on. He can make the videos that Dan can’t. He can post the social media silliness that Dan can’t bring himself to, but he can’t change the way Dan’s mind works. Dan already has a therapist, and some aspects of his journey are not Phil’s to understand.

It’s taken him a long time to get to a place where Phil is comfortable accepting that particular truth. He may still have fantasies of being some kind of saviour, but a decade of learning Dan means he knows he needs to keep those to himself now. Dan doesn’t need a hero, he needs a partner. 

Phil shuffles in a little closer, succumbing to the sudden urge to press a kiss to Dan’s parted lips. Dan’s eyelids move without opening, and his mouth closes when Phil pulls his away. He breathes in deeper through his nose and his body shifts as he starts to wake. Phil leans in and kisses him again, because being Phil’s partner means Dan accepts Phil’s tactile displays of affection even when they come at inconvenient moments. 

This time Dan makes a sleepy grumbly noise in the back of his throat and a crease appears between his eyebrows. Phil kisses that too, chuckling breathily as Dan slowly comes to and groans protestingly at being awoken before he was ready.

Phil backs up a little so he can watch it happen. “Morning,” he murmurs, pleased beyond reason at the puff of Dan’s eyes as they finally open. 

“Didn’t consent to that,” Dan croaks, negating his words immediately by leaning in and planting a kiss of his own on Phil’s smiling mouth. He shuffles forward and nuzzles his face against Phil’s chest. “S’cold.”

“Someone left the window open last night,” Phil says fondly, slinging his arm across Dan’s waist to press his hand against the small of Dan’s back. It’s so warm there that Phil can’t quite believe Dan feels the chill of the outside air at all.

Dan answers by not answering at all, stretching his face up to trail soft slow kisses up Phil’s neck that make Phil shiver for another reason entirely. The kisses are lazy and Phil can tell there’s no intent to take things further. Dan’s just sleepy and generous enough to reciprocate Phil’s affections.

Phil closes his eyes and pulls Dan in closer, pressing their naked chests together and basking in Dan’s warmth. Maybe he’d leave the windows open too if he ran as hot as Dan. 

By now Dan has kissed his way up to Phil’s jaw, where he stops and pulls back. 

Phil opens his eyes. “What?”

“You’re scruffy.” Dan reaches up and traces the line of Phil’s jaw with his forefinger.

Phil rubs his cheek and is surprised by how much hair is there to greet his fingers. “Oh wow, I am. Reckon I should shave.”

Dan shrugs and goes back to kissing the overgrown stubble. “If you want.”

Phil smiles, rubbing his hand up Dan’s back. “You like it?”

“S’kind of sexy.”

“Scratchy though?” Phil asks, recalling countless complaints in the past about ‘kissing sandpaper.’

Dan shrugs. “It’s almost long enough now that it’s not that scratchy anymore.”

“Maybe I’ll grow a Gandalf beard.” 

“Pfft.” Dan scrunches up his face to communicate his disapproval. “Why’d you wake me up, you big nerd?” he asks, yawning as if to prove a point. 

“Got tired of waiting for you to do it on your own.”

Dan shuffles back a little and lays his head down on the pillow, and Phil does the same, tucking his hands up underneath his head. Under the duvet, he presses his cold toes to Dan’s shin.

Dan barely flinches. He’s just looking at Phil, staring at him in a way that would bely his claim of discomfort with eye contact if Phil didn’t already know himself to be the single solitary exception. He stares back, intrigued by how different Dan looks when he’s not unconscious anymore. He looks older to be sure, but certainly no less gorgeous. 

In fact probably even more so. The crow’s feet that cradle his eyes are a welcome addition to Dan’s face, a reminder of how many laughs they’ve shared, how many laughs of which Phil has been the cause. His big brown eyes, eyes that turn warm and golden when the light hits them - they’re dark today, so dark they’re almost black and they’re looking at Phil so intently that it makes his stomach flutter.

That shouldn’t be a thing. Dan’s attention shouldn’t give Phil butterflies after a solid decade of steadfast proof that he’s just as committed as Phil is. It shouldn’t, but it does.

“You’re pretty,” Phil murmurs.

The corner of Dan’s mouth quirks up for a moment. Just a moment, just a hint of a ghost of a smile. Phil can sense so much in that quirk. He can read it like a book.

“Today?” he asks quietly. 

Dan shakes his head. “Not today.”

“But you’re thinking about it. Like, actively.”

Dan nods.

“You sure?”

Dan breathes out a tiny huff of a laugh. “No. Course not.”

Phil reaches out to stroke Dan’s cheek. He can’t physically keep himself from touching Dan in the face of such vulnerability. “There’s no rush.” He says it even though deep down they both know it isn’t _really_ the truth. 

Dan finally breaks the eye contact, turning his face so Phil’s hand falls away. “I can’t keep people waiting forever.”

Phil’s heart constricts painfully for how much he wishes he had the power to make this easier for Dan. He’d do whatever it took, but the cruel reality is that it’s just not his cross to bear. No one can bear it but Dan. 

Phil struggles for a moment, looking at the profile of Dan’s face and scrambling to come up with the right thing to say, something supportive and encouraging and clever and empathetic, something that says he understands and that he has faith that Dan can do whatever he wants to do. Something that says ‘you got this,’ but in the same breath, ‘you don’t have to do this.’

Dan turns to him again and smiles. Not a quirk, but a smile that’s real, that isn’t lost in thought or constrained by anxiety.

Phil smiles back. “You want coffee?”

They’re not the words Phil was looking for, but perhaps for today they’re exactly the ones Dan needs to hear.


End file.
